Highlands Country Club was conceived in the late 1920s by a group that included Robert P. Jones (Bobby Jones’s father), who retained Donald Ross to lay out a course on a mountainous property just outside the town. The club memorializes the ceremonial opening to 1928, when Bobby Jones struck the first ball to “christen” the course. Contemporary club materials and later summaries place Ross’s design effort to that 1928 season, but the sequencing of construction is less clear in the documentary record available publicly. Secondary accounts indicate that the course opened initially with nine holes and that the second nine followed “in due time.” A club agronomy history post—drawing on historic photo evidence—places the completion of the back nine to either 1930 or 1931. None of the accessible sources identify surviving correspondence or minute-book entries to prove that Ross personally returned to Highlands during construction of the second nine; the likeliest scenario is that the full eighteen was built to his plans under local supervision, a common practice for remote mountain work at that time.
Despite the thin paper trail, the finished course reflected a consistent Ross hand by the time the full eighteen was in play: five one-shot holes, three par fives, and a par of 70. The course remained largely intact through mid-century; by the late twentieth century, tree growth, residential lot lines near corridors, and cumulative maintenance changes had altered aspects of width and bunkering while routing and green sites persisted.
Ron Prichard prepared a master plan for Highlands in the 1990s, and the club rebuilt the greens at the end of that decade to restore internal contour and enliven targets that had softened over time. Sources differ on the exact year—club agronomy notes refer to 1998, while an external architectural profile cites 1999—but both agree Prichard led the greens work. A subsequent, comprehensive bunker program was undertaken in the mid-2010s, adopting the Better Billy Bunker method to improve drainage and storm resilience on the club’s steep, rainfall-exposed faces.
Unique Design Characteristics
The present routing is notably compact, with short green-to-tee walks and several holes playing beside or over small mountain streams. Ross’s strategic use of water is most memorably expressed at the dogleg-right 10th, where a stream threads the inside of the landing zone; the best tee shot flirts with the water to open the angle for a demanding, uphill long-iron approach. It is not only a beautiful valley hole but one of the architect’s most admired risk-reward par-4s in the mountains.
On the front side, the 4th is a mid-length, uphill par-3 set to a rolling surface; the internal contours there are explicitly singled out in modern commentary following the greens rebuild, which restored multiple pinnable plateaus. The 5th is a stern, canted par-4 that tumbles along a hillside, a reminder of the course’s reliance on natural slope rather than engineered platforms.
The middle of the back nine shows Ross’s adaptation to subsurface geology. The 12th fairway rides a saddleback—granite lies near the right shoulder—which produces a domed landing area that sheds indifferent tee shots to either edge. Its green, pitched from back to front with multiple distinct sections, rewards precise distance control. The 13th is a long one-shotter across a gully to a green set on a diagonal; misses long-left or high-right are repelled into trouble, while a conservative “short” line remains the only consistently safe miss. The 16th plays to a shelf green benched into slope, a subtlety that creates a shallow, exacting target.
Highlands finishes unconventionally with a par-3. The 18th climbs straight uphill to a small target under the clubhouse terrace. While some modern clubs have replaced par-3 finishers, Highlands has preserved this quirk; the hole remains an exacting, nervy play in matches.
Clubhole notes add further texture. The 11th is an elevated green with a pronounced false front; the 12th green is described as three-tiered; and the back nine as a whole asks for careful placement more than length. These surviving touches—water placement on 10, tiered 12th, diagonal and elevated one-shotters, and the uphill par-3 home hole—are today’s clearest windows into Ross’s Highlands palette.
Historical Significance
Within Ross’s portfolio, Highlands occupies a distinct niche as a late-1920s mountain course of modest yardage but strong strategic interest. The course’s association with Bobby Jones—who summered in Highlands and ceremonially opened the course—gave it early visibility among southern amateurs. Modern architectural writing has continued to highlight specific holes (notably the 10th) as exemplars of Ross’s ability to wring decision-making from tight mountain landforms. While Highlands is a private club and thus under-represented in national public rankings, it is consistently profiled among noteworthy North Carolina mountain courses and is often paired with Roaring Gap in comparative discussions of Ross’s high-country work.
A signal part of Highlands’ community role has been the Bob Jones Invitational, held at the club since the early 1980s. The event—captained by former Walker Cup players—supports local health initiatives; recent tournament communications document cumulative fundraising in the multi-million-dollar range for the Highlands-Cashiers Health Foundation and outline four-decade continuity for the charity outing.
Current Condition / Integrity
Routing integrity at Highlands remains high: corridors follow Ross’s alignment, the five-par-3 / three-par-5 composition survives, and creeks and uphill par-3 bookends (4 and 18) are intact. Two twentieth-century pressures have most affected “feel”: (1) tree growth narrowing select lines of play, and (2) residential development tightening out-of-bounds along holes like 1, 7, and 9. These impacts are acknowledged in architectural commentary and visible on the ground.
Restoration-wise, the pivotal modern intervention was the late-1990s greens rebuild under Ron
Prichard. External observers credit that work with adding interior movement relative to Ross’s other mountain greens and with returning variety in size and contour. The club then pursued a comprehensive bunker upgrade: a 2014–15 program replaced sands, adopted Better Billy Bunker construction, and addressed washouts and contamination endemic to Highlands’ ~100 inches of annual rainfall. The club’s maintenance communications further note that the original push-up greens had evolved to Poa annua prior to the 1990s rebuild; the reconstructed putting surfaces now are managed as Penn A-4 bentgrass, supported by airflow strategies and shade mitigation. As a result, today’s presentation is firm by mountain standards, with faster surfaces and more distinct pinnable areas than existed in the late twentieth century.
Outside the ropes, the club invested in campus amenities (notably a 2014 expansion of the Life Enhancement Center), while maintaining the golf course’s traditional walkability and compact spacing. The club also highlights environmental certifications (GEO, Groundwater Guardian Greensite, Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary), an unusual trio among private mountain clubs, tied to stewardship of the property’s waterways and tree canopy.
Primary uncertainties center on: (1) the precise opening sequence of the second nine (1930 vs. 1931), and (2) whether Ross personally returned on site during that phase. The club’s own historical photo commentary cites both 1930 and 1931 in different captions; a widely used directory profile mentions that the “original 9-hole course” preceded the full eighteen without giving dates. A definitive resolution would require inspection of club board minutes (1928–31), any construction contracts or invoices naming on-site supervisors, and a search of the Tufts Archives for a dated Highlands plan set or field notes. There is also a minor discrepancy in sources as to the year of the Prichard greens work—1998 (club agronomy notes) vs. 1999 (external architectural profile)—though both attribute the work to Prichard and describe the scope similarly.
Sources & Notes
Highlands Country Club — “Golf” (course overview, altitude, events) and course tour with hole-by-hole yardages/par and scorecard image.
Highlands Country Club — “About Us” (1928 first ball by Bobby Jones; Ross engagement; location/contact).
GolfClubAtlas — “Highlands Country Club, North Carolina” (hole analyses; greens rebuilt by Ron Prichard in 1999; course composition; OB pressures from homes; representative photos of 10, 12, 13, 16). GolfClubAtlas.com, originally published 2001, updated 2024.
Top100GolfCourses — “Highlands Country Club” (note that Bobby Jones practiced here; statement that an “original 9-hole course” preceded completion of the full eighteen).
Highlands CC Golf Maintenance Blog — “My favorite historic photo…” and related historical posts (back-nine completion dated to 1930/31; summary of 1990s master plan; attribution of 1998 greens renovation to Ron Prichard).
Highlands CC Golf Maintenance Blog — “Bunkers” (2014 sand replacement; description of Billy Bunker spec) and “Bunker alternatives” (2015 plan to implement Better Billy Bunker across course). GCSAA TV / Tee-2-Green — “Highlands Country Club in Highlands, North Carolina” (superintendent interview noting Penn A-4 bentgrass use and mountain maintenance challenges). GCSAA.tv video feature.
Highlands Country Club — “Amenities” (2014 renovation and expansion of Life Enhancement Center; description of other club amenities).
Highlands-Cashiers Health Foundation — Bob Jones Invitational articles (tournament history, amounts raised, multi-decade continuity), and BobJonesInvitational.com (since 1982; cumulative fundraising figures). Various posts 2019–24.